All or almost all of the currently known alert systems may be categorized into either wide area alert/notification systems or local area alert/notification systems, and depending on the particular system, individual parties or the general public are addressed with a specific message.
For example, systems to alert the general public of an impending natural disaster (e.g., hurricane, tsunami, tornado, etc.) or large-scale incidents (e.g., chemical/nuclear plant failure, terrorist attack, etc.) typically rely on an operator or other mechanism to trigger transmission of an emergency signal over a wide area notification zone. Commonly known instances for such wide area notifications include radio transmissions to Tone Alert Radios (TAR), cable and/or radio-controlled operation of sirens, public announcement systems, public bill boards, and/or automated dialers that call a geographically defined group of phone and/or pager subscribers.
While such wide area systems often reach a substantial portion of the general public, numerous disadvantages remain. Among other things, members of the public without access to a TAR or telephone are typically not aware of an alert/notification. Similarly, and especially in relatively noisy or isolated environments (e.g., within a plant, on a beach, or in an airport), alert/notifications via sirens and/or speakers of a public announcement system are often not accurately understood or even readily perceived. In still further examples, and especially where alert/notifications are provided via cell phones, lack of reliable coverage area often prevents effective notification of all intended recipients.
On the other hand, local area alert/notification systems typically provide area specific notification, which is generally of little to no interest to people outside the coverage area of such systems. Most commonly, local area alert/notification systems find use in restaurant paging to indicate availability of a table in a restaurant, or in hospitals that alert a doctor or nurse of a patient in need of attention. Moreover, most of the local paging systems only provide a blinking light, buzzing, and/or numeric display. Thus, such systems are typically not used for alert and notification of the public within the local area, where the notification relates to impending natural disasters and/or large-scale incidents. Still further, if local paging systems would be used for dissemination of emergency messages, such systems would have to reply on the operator receiving an emergency message in the first place and would then require the operator to stay on task to manually relay that message through the local paging system.
Therefore, while numerous devices and methods for alert notification are known in the art, all or almost all of them, suffer from one or more disadvantages. Therefore, there is still a need for improved systems and methods to provide alert and notification to members of the general public.